FC Twente's manager Steve McClaren is behind one of the club's most successful seasons in their history. Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images

To a football fan, few things are as exciting as unbridled, gasp-inducing potential. And to that same fan, few things are as irritating as a diver who tries his very best to deceive and achieve through the most unflattering of ways. What if I told you the two could be combined? Melded into one super-talented, super-annoying Uruguayan Ajax attacker. Half man, half amazing and yet only half a man, acting childish and insolent – he is Luis Suárez, the 22-year-old tinglingly talented protagonist extraordinaire.

Having shown off superb touch and mobility and a deplorable attitude eager to scrape out any advantage there is to gain, Suárez has nursed a love/hate relationship with his audience. His whimsical irreverence makes him both infuriating and a joy to behold, mesmerising the eye while vexing the brain.

Last week, against AZ, he decided a crucial penalty was the best time to try a daring, delayed chip, which was saved by the keeper. "Luis is unpredictable," his manager, Marco van Basten, said. "He's hard to influence. But that makes him kind of special too."

But aside from taking penalties – he's converted eight, helping him share the lead in the scoring charts with Mounir El Hamdaoui, who has taken no penalties, at 22 apiece – Suárez is at least as fond of earning them. Indeed, he could have helped Sir Isaac Newton come to his ground-breaking conclusion a lot sooner than an apple and the moon did, so keen is he on going to ground in the penalty box.

However, having maxed out on the law of diminishing returns, he has so frequently conned referees that nothing short of a dismembered leg will get him a penalty these days. That became apparent on Sunday, when a challenge on him that deserved at least some penalty consideration was waved away by a referee determined not to be fooled.

That, yet another Oleguer Presas sending-off and a disjointed Ajax allowed lowly Sparta to extract four goals from them. The away 4–0 loss meant that Ajax have conceded 10 in just two games. "This was very bad, very painful, very annoying. How in God's name is it possible that we can't beat Sparta when it really matters?" said Van Basten. "Is it even fun to be manager any more?" he was asked. "Not now, no. Not right now … I don't want to leave. But the directors may want something else. That's possible, of course. "

Upon the return of the team bus to the Ajax stadium it was once again boxed in by angry supporters. As the team filed off to try to calm their tested and testy fans, the picture of the fallen giants turned ever more grim. The players bowed their heads in shame, looking decidedly modest in stature, as Van Basten tried to defend his side and the "process".

To his right stood his star, Suárez, looking mournful and unable to contribute for lack of Dutch. He is a metaphor for this Ajax – talented but inefficient, annoying, altogether concerned with the wrong things and, worst of all, unable to communicate, internally or to the fans.

To make amends for this talent wasted is a side making the very best of what little it has: FC Twente. Threatening throughout, Twente went ahead after the break on Sunday, when Kenneth Perez deposited a beautiful free-kick behind the AZ keeper Sergio Romero and doubled the score with a Peter Wisgerhof goal from close in. When the striker Ari's missed a clear chance it confirmed that champions AZ, with nothing left to win, had no interest in doing any such thing, allowing the excelling Eljero Elia to make it 3–0.

Their win and Ajax's defeat secured Twente's second place, sending them into the Champions League qualifiers next season. After the match, the manager, Steve McClaren, also celebrating his 48th birthday, was mobbed by his adoring players and then lifted on their shoulders. Seriously.

He may still circumvent the unwritten Dutch ban on speaking in managerial cliches, but he is forgiven. Out-Dutching the Dutch, McClaren never wavered from a classical Dutch 4-3-3 this year, equipping his side with the guile and flair his England squads so sorely lacked, and creating unison in a speckled bunch that became a paragon of consistency and reliability.

If he wins the Dutch Cup on 17 May, McClaren will have registered the finest season Twente have ever had. "At the end of the ride you end up where you are supposed to in the table," McClaren said of their runners-up place. "We deservedly came second because of the play we've shown this season."

And, like it or not, England, and I must confess to have been among the drivers of the bandwagon of doubt, that makes two jobs very well done out of the last three for McClaren. Having far surpassed what could be reasonably expected of him with Middlesbrough, Twente effectively erases the England disaster, making it an aberration in an otherwise successful career path, rather than a defining and dooming unmasking. He will get another crack at taking Twente into the Champions League. "I just hope that we get a little luck in the draw and don't draw a team like Arsenal again," McClaren said.

Two red cards for PSV, one even dumber than the other (the first for Danko Lazovic who was carded for taking off his shirt after scoring a penalty and an accidental handball; the second for an Edison Méndez tackle which mowed both the grass and the legs out from under his opponent), cost them two points as NEC eked out a last-minute equaliser to make it 1–1.

Meanwhile, the AZ manager, Louis van Gaal, is rumoured to be close to signing with Bayern Munich and, for the first time since the 1958-59 season, the Big Three didn't make the top two.